Any Tree Can Drop an Apple
by ilko
Summary: Sho's 1/trash heap surveying his kingdom when he spots the hedgehog kid.
A/N: This is 100% completely self-indulgent Sho monologue. A Sholiloquy, if you will. /shot

Disclaimer: This is an AO3-crossposted rewrite of a fic I originally posted some five years ago under the username TangerineTea, but the two versions are different enough that I feel pretty okay about not taking down the other one, having lost access to that account and all.

Additional Disclaimer: I am not good at math. Sho is not good at logic, which is surprising for a mathematician, but who knows what goes on in that crazy's head anyway.

[01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101111]

Sho's 1/trash heap surveying his kingdom when he spots the hedgehog kid. Just another brain-dead binomial accelerating straight vector, (0,0,0,0) to (z, y, x, v), scrapping with the baby Reapers to square out the mission to save the day to survive the week to win the Game to get back what he's lost, who gives a digit what? Sho's got a zetta sexy hat and a sweet-ass coat and a mathematician's brain and an artist's soul and he hasn't lost anything in a y=√x time. The closest thing to regret he ever feels is when his piles of junk collapse on a sloppy calculation. But hey, beauty is fleeting, and anyway there's always more where it came from.

 _(the world is garbage)_

But holy hollow-skulled hectopascal, Newton, is this kid zetta slow. Out of his vector fer sure, + there are n! permutations of tortures Sho would choose over spending time hanging with that scrawny beady-eyed Q-tip he calls Partner—fluffy-headed little prick too cool to show up to his own death, always laughing behind those corpse-grey eyes.

Trigging unnerving.

(Of course Sho knows the Composer. Of course he, of all the Reapers, would recognize a god tasting his creation.)

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 _He hears God is dead. He hears it was man who killed the god. He hears it was an apple that brought the Fall. He hears it was the god who made the tree._

 _Any tree can drop an apple. Any man can kill a god. And he is more than just a man._

 _0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13._

 _The world is garbage made of numbers._

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Sine, cosine, tangent. Sho couldn't care less what the Composer is up to, playing human like he's one of them, those tasteless tetrahedra forced into tessellation, edges colliding, scrabbling in the dirt and clawing at each other for space to breathe—it's x 4 some _fun_.

The taste of victory is already thick on his tongue, heady and cloying like sour candy-apple, like a perfect set of untouched numbers. _Crunch._

…Add it to the heap. The world is garbage, and so beautiful it hurts.

That goddamn empty set's gone and derived his own function! Half the work with none of the effort, it's like March 14th and July 22nd and February 7th all in one.

But. Too many variables. The kid, for 1. Orange blue purple white, this kid blind? Trying to stand out. Like a poison bug, right up in your face. Sixteen maybe fifteen. Broody self-absorbed son of a digit thinks Sho's talking to _him_. They always think everything's about them. He's talking to the _Composer_ , he's talking to a _god_ , he's factoring— _reverse-engineering his desired solution._

He's been a Reaper a long time, dead even longer, but still not long enough to forget. High school. Light-years ahead of the rest, math so simple but people so—higher digits on his IQ than in the bank. Easy prey. They tore at him—until one day he learned how to tear back.

He knows this hollow-skulled hectopascal like he knows digits of pi. He knows that smirk and that defensive arrogance.

He knows the fear on his face.

 _Some Old Horses Can Always Hear Their Owners Approach_ , he thinks, and _it's x 2 die_.

He attacks.

[01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101111]

He loses.

This kid, this factoring hectopascal, anything Sho could possibly have guessed.

Hedgehog kid Sho. A Z-class code at best.

He's been divided too sloppily to bear, and all that's left is to drag the remainder away to lick his wounds.

It zetta bytes.

But the Composer in battle, pulling his weight but no more. Like he's waiting—for what? For the kid to deliver, to win, to…impress? _Proxy._

Sho knows this hollow-skulled hectopascal like he knows digits of pi.

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164 062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095 5058223172535940812848111—pi goes on forever. He'll never know the end.

[01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101111]

 _Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally._ He sits on top of his latest sculpture, squints a little to make out the orange blob that is the kid's head bobbing up and down in the RG crowd. Scowling at the Composer, shoulders tense, arms folded close across his chest. Defensive—everything about the kid is. Like an animal backed into a corner. Not like the figures in his memory, all brainless belligerence and shaky machismo. The kid's anger is more subtle, directed in out, not that there isn't a ton of out.

Sho sees him better from a distance. _First, Outer, Inner, Last._ He finds new significance in the things he didn't then, the little things: weird clothes, don't-care hair, headphones on and loud and offensively tasteless. Purple.

Sho wants them on a mountain of garbage. He wants to cover him up, rain trash down on this little yoctogram until he's done and rest the headphones on top like a cherry on a sundae, like flowers on a grave.

The kid spends _so much time_ scanning, greedy for the snatches of inanity insanity incomprehensibility from the normals passing by, greedy for _normalcy_ and _life_ and _human_ _connection_ , like it _matters_ , like those things _mean_ anything, you're _dead_ —

Dying was the best thing that's ever happened to him. Death gave him power. Death _is_ power. Being dead is _zetta fuckin' fun_ , and power is the best thing in the world. So obviously he's got to get more of it, and obviously the only way is up. He's trapped in a Game, so the only thing to do is play it.

The name of the game is King of the Hill, and he's already on top of one.

 _The world is garbage._

 _The world is garbage made of numbers._

 _The world is garbage made of numbers and all he's got to do is the math._

[01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101111]

When the mismatched pair of fractals finally wander into the Scramble Crossing Sho shifts frequencies. The kid kicks at the mound—tin cans and wooden crates and rotting fruit and pages and pages and reams of calculations sliding against each other, unbalancing the perfectly understated silhouette—"Where the hell is Pi-Face, anyway?"

Q-tip looks Sho straight in the eye as he drawls, "No _i-_ dear." The kid turns on him, snarling and snapping. "' _No pet names_ ' includes _puns_ , you incredible dick, do you have to _work_ at being so annoying or did it just come with the giant ball of dust on your head?"

It'd be erasure in a picosecond from anyone else, but the Composer just looks amused, maybe even fond.

Scanning, and battling, and finishing missions. Driven by some unknown purpose that he reminds himself of with every step, every fight, every glance at his phone. Sho kicks a rusted bicycle off the side of his pedestal of discarded things and waits for the kid to come around again.

Honestly, this is subtracting from his arts and crafts time.

Eventually he'll erase the kid and never give the matter another thought. Eventually he'll topple the Composer and remake the Game in his own image. Zetta fun times.  
But for now, he watches and waits.

[01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101111]

 _The world's made of numbers. Do the math and you'll find your desired solution._

It was an apple brought the Fall of Man. It was a god made the tree.

 _Any tree can drop an apple, I'll drop the freaking moon._

Any man can drop a god, but he's gonna drop the Beat, he's gonna make some Noise.

Reverse-engineering his desired solution, one number at a time.

He's gonna rattle this town, scramble this crossing, ten-four? Shi- _booyeah_.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, ...

[01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010011 01101000 01101111]

A/N: It is my headcanon that Sho was fat in high school. I have absolutely zero basis for assuming this except for his tight clothes and vague disgust towards Higashizawa.

March 14th is Pi Day, of course, and July 22nd is Pi Approximation Day! February 7th is from Euler's number. It is, as far as I know, not an actual thing, but it seemed like something Sho would be into (what a loser).

Also, in the interest of not propagating misinformation, it technically wasn't actually an apple in Eden but an unspecified fruity thing (kinda like Josh— /shot). The apple thing was part from the fact that that the Latin words for "bad thing/evil" and "apple" are identical in print (both "malum," though differing in pronunciation) and part from Renaissance painters co-opting elements of Greek mythology. Sho doesn't give a shit, though, so I guess you don't have to, either *g*

ALSO I actually don't ship Hanekoma/Sho so idk why this even occurred to me but if anyone's into that can you please do something with this line: 'He doesn't have time for cute Angels. Acute angles. He means acute angles.'

Anyway, hope you enjoyed!


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